You’re never too young to dream big

Starting early in primary schools is key to employer education outreach.

At PwC, our work in primary schools is an important part and extension of our long-standing commitment to working with the education sector to help young people develop skills and see what the work place of today is all about. 

Our Social Mobility Schools programme offers students the opportunity to develop their confidence and key employability skills through an approach that blends face-to-face and virtual activities, allowing us to reach more young people across a wider geographical reach. 

Helping to boost social mobility is key to how we support our local communities too. Through our school​s​ outreach, we aim to reach the most disadvantaged areas, remove barriers to access and equip young people with the skills they need to help them fulfil their potential and achieve positive employment outcomes in their careers of choice. 

Why did we get involved in primary 

There is an increasing body of research which highlights the importance of “starting early” with career-related learning and engaging with primary aged children. So in 2023, we launched a pilot programme, delivering ​primary ​schools outreach​​​​, with a view to expand our reach and impact.  

The Careers and Enterprise Company’s (CEC) Start Small; Dream Big pilot is very aligned with what we are aiming to achieve with our own outreach programme.  

When we heard The CEC was looking for employers to deliver encounters for primary schools, we thought it would be a great opportunity to develop our programme, engage with more students in a systematic way and begin to develop relationships in the primary space. We were able to define our involvement and what we were able to offer.  

The purpose of our primary sessions is to excite and inspire children about the world of work and their future careers.  

​​​What have we done so far 

Our work with primary pupils in Wave 1 of the Primary Pilot focused on disadvantaged communities in three areas of the country – Cornwall, Cambridge and Newcastle. 

In Cornwall, all our activity was targeted at Year 5 and 6 and involved running three virtual insight days reaching over 140 children.  

The sessions focused on key skills like listening, speaking and teamwork, showing the children how they were relevant and important to the different sorts of jobs people do. They also showed how what they are learning in the classroom in different lessons was connected to developing the skills they would need ​in the workplace​​.

The feedback we had from the sessions was very positive with one teacher saying: “The children enjoyed the session and were buzzing to feedback to others about what they had been doing and had learnt.” 

In Cambridge and Newcastle we delivered two in person insight days in our offices for ​54 ​​Year 6 children. ​​     ​ 

For many of these children it was their first experience of seeing what an office is like, meeting people who work in that environment, hearing about the wide range of different jobs people do and seeing them in action. 

In our experience, the ​office​​ ​visits are a powerful way of giving children a clear line of sight into the sorts of jobs people do and helping them picture themselves in those roles. 

The feedback from the teachers helped reinforce to us how important and influential these ‘show and tell’ moments can be for children, even at a young age. 

“The budgeting activity at the end of the day was really purposeful and linked well to the curriculum we teach in school. It also related learning to the real world.”  

“Finding out about job roles and the tour of the office definitely had the most impact on the pupils.” 

Our future plans 

Our experience of the CEC’s primary programme, Start Small; Dream Big has been very positive. CEC’s Careers Hubs have made it much easier for us as an employer to make meaningful connections with the primary schools in their patch and the schools we worked with have been very engaged in the programme. 

It has also enabled us ​to expand​ our geographic reach and tap into an existing network to help develop our programme further. 

We will be continuing to work with the programme as the pilot rolls out further across the country and build on our mix of in person and virtual insight sessions for primary pupils.  

Through our engagement in Wave 2 of the Primary Pilot we’ve expanded to 11 locations. Five face to face programmes in Bristol, Newcastle, Birmingham, Leeds and Southampton and six virtual in Cornwall, Plymouth, Dorset, New Anglia, East Sussex and Somerset, totalling 546 primary students from years 4 – 6. 

What the Start Small; Dream Big pilot has demonstrated to us are the real benefits of starting early when it comes to education engagement and the enormous impact such ​workplace​ experiences can have on young people​ from lower socio-economic backgrounds​, opening their eyes to opportunity and helping them see the possibilities for their potential beyond school.